The old man scowled at him, his face frosty and boiling with hate all at once. He looked to be considering the situation through his drunkenness. “Filth, is what I say. Filth and all . . .”
This made no sense to Fletcher, but he didn’t dare speak. His news had somehow eased, if only slightly, the tension between them. Fletcher sagged, his muscles screaming. Despite his predicament, a thin groan leaked from his mouth.
The old man did not appear to notice. But he did ease back a step once more and Fletcher thought his grip on the gun had softened. The big knuckles were less white-looking.
“If you are who you say you are, I will give the matter thought before I touch the trigger on Ol’ Bossy here and leave your head with a smoking hole where your brains ought to have been.”
Fletcher had to think about this. Had he just been given a reprieve, however slight, from imminent death?
“Get on your feet and walk thataway!” The old man pointed uphill, to the right. “Now get on up there ahead of me.”
“I . . . gaah!” Fletcher tried to stand and found he was paralyzed. Every minor movement twinged a lightning jag of hot pain, as if a knotted chain of razor blades was being dragged through his body up and down, side to side.
“What ails you, vermin?”
“No, not vermin. My body. I have not moved since falling asleep last night here in the dark.”
“No wonder! Look at the clothes you’re wearing! Layers of foolishness on top of foolishness. An onion of foolishness is what you are!”
Despite his predicament, Fletcher felt as though his ego had been thoroughly slapped. “I beg your”—he managed to straighten a leg and massaged a kneecap—“pardon, but I’m . . . gaah . . . clothed in the very latest wear available for a gentleman trending forth on an adventure westward.”
“Sound like a fool who’s experienced his life through a newspaper. Fools, all! Every damn thing ever come from a city is foolish, and no mistake.” The wild man nodded, agreeing with himself.
It went on like this without cease as they walked, the once-near-silent, crazy old man berating him with unfounded accusations.
“Gunnar.”
“Pardon?” Fletcher discovered that in addition to being deranged, the man was prone to mumbling to himself.
“My name!” He spat brown juice to the earth.
Did everybody in this fiendish place chew tobacco and spit upon the ground and half upon themselves?
“Gunnar. Gunnar Tibbs!”
“Ah, I see.”
“No, you don’t. You don’t see nothing because you’re from a city and city folks are all stupid. Blinded by what they think is their own importance and grandeur.”
Fletcher almost said that he was impressed that the old man could use such a large and noble word, but he thought wiser of it.
“I will tell you what you can and can’t see, and what you can and can’t say. Far as I’m concerned, you’re a dead man walking anyway. You’re a killer and a thief and all.”
“But I tell you—”
The crazy old man poked the gun’s barrel into Fletcher’s back once more. It hurt as much as it had the first four times and he responded again with an “Ow!”
It didn’t matter to the man.
“And stop shuffling that sack of yours from one hand to the other. Pick one and stick with it! You don’t stick with a thing in life, you’ll never amount to nothing.”
Great, thought Fletcher, trying to ignore the throbbing in his cramping hands. I’m getting unsolicited advice on living from a lunatic.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
As they climbed higher into the mountains, the winding trail grew steeper and tighter and seemed to Fletcher to switchback into itself unnecessarily. He was so exhausted, he stumbled and fell into boulders and leaned, sagging, against trees.
“What ails you, killer? You got a case of the dropsy guilts?” This struck the crazy old man as humorous and he cackled.
Fletcher did not care much what this old fool thought of him. He risked showing the man, at least with his eyes, his displeasure at being treated with such callousness. The old man didn’t notice.
At the next tree, Tibbs said, “You don’t keep her moving, I’ll give you what for!”
“As I don’t know what that might entail, I will only say that I will risk it. I had a long night in the cold and I—”
“Oh, you had a long night? Ain’t any longer than what my poor Millie has been through. And her night ain’t never going to end! Now get on up the trail or I’ll make meat of you!”
That got Fletcher’s feet shuffling upslope once more.
Soon the trail wound around a cluster of boulders each taller than two men. Before them, in a glade somewhat stippled with trees, sat a cabin.
As unkempt and crusty as the old man was, his cabin, or “the homestead,” as he called it, was a refreshing, surprising, and welcome sight. It seemed to appear before them as if it had been conjured.
The abode itself was a log structure, not a surprise given the preponderance of trees surrounding it. But it was also of a chalet design, wide and low with a center peak and colorful adornments, which surprised Fletcher. It looked not unlike those he’d seen illustrating the serialized adventures in Cawley’s Weekly Reader, following adventurer Hans Sigridson’s journeys into the high Alps of Switzerland.
Two windows flanked a plank front door, but it was the windows’ shutters and flower boxes beneath, all painted a gay red and filled with yellow, blue, and green flowers and leaves, that most impressed Fletcher.
The front peak stood roughly eight feet, though far out of the bent old man’s reach. Adorning the end of the ridgepole was an impressive set of antlers.
Fletcher stood weaving and pulling hard breaths. His sight rested on the antlers and he closed his eyes to the bright blue morning sky above. As pretty as it was, it made his head ache. He opened them once more and noticed that something up on the antlers moved.
“That’s Mort.”
Fletcher squinted and realized the moving bit of the antlers was a black bird, a crow perhaps, though on the small side, but sleek and attentive. In fact, he looked to be watching the two men with as much attention as they were showing him.
“He looks . . . healthy,” said Fletcher, noting the bird’s shining wings and breast.
“He ought to. I feed him, so he don’t work at all. Useless as birds go, but good fun to have around.”
“Why Mort?”
“After my brother, another useless devil who relied on mooching and handouts to get by. Ended up marrying a rich widow, living out his life in high style in San Fran— Hey!”
The old man jerked the gun barrel to point at Fletcher once more. “I knowed you were gifted with the silver tongue! That’s how you got the better of Millie, and that would take some doing. . . .”
He pulled the gun’s barrel back for another poke, but Fletcher shied away, spinning to face his captor. “I tell you, sir, I didn’t kill anyone!”
He didn’t care anymore what the old man thought or didn’t think of him. He was fed up, beyond exhausted, and filthy with the grit and grime accumulated since the last decent bath he’d had, which had been in . . . St. Louis? Oh, my, he thought, how long ago was that? Weeks had passed since then. The very thought made him ill.
The two men regarded each other. To Fletcher, the old man, this Gunnar Tibbs, looked plenty potted and besotted with alcohol. He certainly exuded a drinker’s stink, and his eyes were still bloodshot. He weaved on his feet, looking as unsteady as Fletcher felt.
A full minute passed before Tibbs spoke. “Could be I have read you wrong, dandy. Could be I am right, too. More than likely that is the case. I have yet to be wrong in this life, except for the times when I have been.” He hiccupped and prodded the air between them with the gun’s barrel once more, as if to emphasize the point.
Once more, Fletcher had no idea what to make of the man’s blurry speech. He chose to keep his mouth shut.
“But you have presented me with a case of reasonable doubt”—here Gunnar smiled and nodded, anticipating Fletcher’s surprised look at him uttering such an impressive phrase—“and I have been drinking to soothe the pangs of mourning that have draped themselves over me like an evil quilt.”
“I had no idea an article of bedding could acquire traits of intent,” Fletcher said in a low voice, even though he knew he should not have said anything at all.
Quick as a snake strike, Gunnar Tibbs jabbed him in the gut hard with the snout of the gun. “Don’t test me, boy. I ain’t stupid and I damn sure ain’t deaf.” He straightened and regarded the doubled-over dandy before him. “Now, I will forgive that fresh lipping of yours, at least for the moment. But I will tie you up while I cogitate on the situation.”
Even in his freshened, wheezing state, Fletcher heard and understood what the crazy old man was about to do with him. “No, I can’t . . . I won’t take any more. No more!”
It pained him to hear himself wail like a fat child with no sweets, but there it was—the frontier had reduced him to savagery, just as it had all the people who had ventured west of the Mississippi River.
“Then I’ll kill you where you stand, just in case I am right and you are the killer of my dear, sweet Millie!”
Fletcher hung his head, feeling the weight of futility and exhaustion once more.
“Walk on over to the front porch and drop that bag of yourn on the top step. No, to the right. Yes, that’s the spot. Then walk over there where I’m pointing this death-dosing shotgun. You see that big rock yonder?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Go over there and do your business. I’ll keep a respectful distance. Then you get back here and get comfortable because I have some thinking to do.”
When he’d returned, walking as if he were wading in knee-deep sand, Gunnar motioned him once more to the porch post. “Set down there and put your hands behind yourself. And no more of the city-boy, greenhorn, dandy whining, neither!”
Fletcher merely nodded and did as Tibbs bade him.
The old man worked quickly, something for which Fletcher was grateful. Tibbs’ breath close by him was a fetid wash of curdled air.
“Why should I not turn you in to Marshal McDoughty?”
“That man,” said Fletcher, not trying to keep the sneer from his voice, “is a ruffian and a buffoon.”
“I don’t know I disagree with all that, as he’s been a burr under my saddle for some time. Long time ago, he thought he’d slide on in ahead of me and get himself in Millie’s good graces.” Gunnar sipped from a bottle of amber liquid. “But she fooled him.”
“How?” Fletcher would do anything, even perpetuate this inane conversation, to keep his mind off of the cramps and jags of hot pains he felt in his muscles and joints. He wondered if his knees and ankles and wrists would ever recover from this harsh treatment. Why didn’t I go into law instead of banking? he thought. I might then have known how to take this kidnapping ruffian to task once I am cleared of false accusations.
“She saw his true colors, that’s how. And she stuck with me through it all, as I did with her, too. Been sweet on each other a long time. Until last night, oh!” Tibbs’ voice cracked and he wept once more into his outstretched grubby palms. “ ’Twas the only night I hadn’t made it into town before dark in a month. Had trouble at the mine.”
“Then by your own logic,” said Fletcher, “you are a suspect as well.”
“Hey? What’s that you say?”
Oh, no, thought Fletcher. Why can’t I learn to keep my mouth closed?
The old man eyed him once more with that squinty gaze. He surprised him, though, by merely shaking his head. “Ain’t polite to tell a fellow he’s kilt the love of his life. Pray you never feel what I feel right now, boy.” Tibbs stood and stretched. “Of course, as you’ll likely only be alive for another few hours, it don’t much matter what you pray for.”
He swigged from his little bottle of amber liquid and nudged Fletcher’s bag closer to his own feet.
“Those are my personal possessions, sir. I’ll ask you kindly to leave them alone. You have no call to . . .”
Faster than Fletcher had ever seen any sleight-of-hand man, Gunnar Tibbs, drunk as he was, shucked a big-bladed hip knife, leaned forward, and shaved off two buttons from Fletcher’s soiled gray waistcoat. The mother-of-pearl buttons spanged and popped upward before plinking to the worn floorboards of the porch.
“Hey!” said Fletcher, then stopped. The tip of the shining steel blade, a point as sharp as a snake’s tongue, hovered before Fletcher’s dirty, unshaven chin.
“What’s that you was gonna say?”
Fletcher swallowed. “I . . . I believe you’ll find a number of items of interest within my satchel.”
Tibbs nodded and began lifting out the more recently acquired items. “Well, well.” He unrolled the two-gun rig, hefting the pair of pearl-handled killing devices. He paused, admiring the gleaming black carved leather gun belt. “Oh, uh-huh,” he said, nodding his head in silent agreement.
“What?”
“ST.”
“Oh, yes. Those would be the initials of the former owner, one . . .”
Again, Gunnar nodded. “Samuel Thorne. Yep.”
“How did you know?”
“Makes sense, as he was your pappy.”
“I thought the jury’s out on that particular verdict, Mr. Tibbs.”
“Naw, no it ain’t, neither.” Gunnar set the revolvers aside. “You look just like him.” He lifted out the box with the derringer, harrumphed. “Hideout gun. Hmmph, figures. Another of your papa’s weapons.”
Then he came to the locket, and even with his grubby, work-thickened fingers, the old man managed to pop it open. Fletcher half expected him to bite it to test for gold content, then stuff it in his pocket. Instead he squinted at the two pictures, smiled at one, frowned at the other, grunted, and clicked the locket shut once more before replacing it in the box.
Lastly there was the letter. He recognized the writing on the envelope as Millicent Jessup’s and his face pinched a little.
“Oh, Millie,” he whispered. He set the letter back in the bag, reached for his bottle, and glugged back a long swig.
“You may read it if you like,” said Fletcher. “I have nothing to hide.”
“Thank you, but I reckon I don’t need to.”
“Why not? In fact, if it will help to convince you I’m innocent of so ghastly a crime, I insist you read it, sir.”
“Insist all you want, dandy. I ain’t going to read that letter. I already know what it’s got to offer.”
“But how could you?”
“I was there when she wrote it. Asked my opinion of it all.”
“From the look on your face, I’d say you disapproved of the course she took.”
“Let’s just say she didn’t heed my advice on all of it. Or much of it, for that matter. Millie Jessup is . . . was . . . a woman who knew her own mind and to hell with anybody who disagreed.” He smiled at the memory of his sweetie. “I think she asked me just to be polite, didn’t have no interest in taking my advice from the start anyway.”
He stood, rubbed his back, stretched, and yawned.
If his hands hadn’t begun to throb like a month-old toothache, Fletcher might have felt more sympathy toward the quietly blubbering old man. As it was, he kept his peace and let Tibbs grieve.
Fletcher suspected he should feel worse than he did about her death. She was, after all, his aunt, of sorts. The fact that he hadn’t known her did lit
tle to lessen his guilt.
Then the old man surprised him. “Time to eat,” he said, and untied the rope he’d moments before wrapped tight about the porch post.
With his hands still tied, Fletcher struggled to a standing position once more. Tibbs poked him in the back and herded him into the cabin. “Set down there,” said the old man, nodding toward a chair drawn up to a table. A few moments later, the old man had begun cooking breakfast.
“How come you dress as you do?” Fletcher asked.
Gunnar Tibbs looked up with bloodshot eyes from shoving bacon around in a cast-iron pan and regarded his guest. “I could ask the same of you.”
He dished up the mad fried scramble of eggs, potatoes, and chunks of stale bread and draped the still-limp bacon atop. “Now let’s us get down to the nub of it and we’ll see if we can come to terms.”
“Are you going to free me or should I just dine like a dog?”
“First off, who said anything about you eating? Could be I fixed up that second plate for myself, save me time walking to the stove to ladle up the last of the pan’s offerings. Then there’s this: Say I do untie you. What makes you think I can trust you? You’re a city boy, and a rabbity sort at that. And I ain’t yet convinced you didn’t do the foul deed that laid Millie low. Hey?”
Even as he said this, he walked up beside Fletcher and slid the big hip knife out of its beaded and fringed sheath. The young man’s breath hitched and he tensed. Gunnar laughed.
“Relax yourself, dandy. I wanted to kill you, I’d have done it by now. Rummaging through your traps convinced me you likely didn’t kill Millie. In fact, I got me an idea of who done it. It’s a long shot, but then again, what else have I got, what with you innocent and all? Mostly anyway.”
He sliced the rawhide binding Fletcher’s wrists, and the young dandy’s arms flopped down, hanging like wet ropes. Fletcher groaned as blood filled his hands once more, slowly rubbing them together, then his legs.
Ralph Compton Guns of the Greenhorn Page 9
